Containers for the Unpredicted

The final post sent from East Anglia with much appreciation for a 2 week residency with uncertainty.

Solitary, but not solitary…company and compatriots in other guises – pebbles, paper, sand, water, vegetables, air and gravity.

THE CONTAINERS [or some of them]

This blog   A quick repository, especially useful framework for week 1, before the flow gained momentum.

Writing   Sometimes in the dark, useful for planning, unblocking and for its own sake.

Notebook, handmade, not precious. (Note that the beautiful book kept saying ‘don’t spoil me’ which wasn’t helpful)

Bowls, jars, microwave, paint brushes, paper.  For making and holding colour.

The walk   Receptacle for the expansive spaces.

The house   Exemplar container – uncluttered from demands and distractions, porous –  door opening to the sea. Holding and enabling.

The screen   Restricted internet access which reduced reliance and flagged up the attention theft.  This container enabled the blog, but opaque, disingenuous and seductive – use cautiously when opening to uncertainty!

CONTAINERS [without human priority]

Pebbles and rocks. Containers of deep time stories of seismic movement, powerful compression and intense heat.

The sea. Permeable container of energy and so much unknown (to humans).

The sky. Vessel of much invisible matter and ambiguous edges

Non-human language. Does not recognise the above categories.

A year ago I added printed text on kelp and then it dried. The surface resembles a woven backing. It is like an interface that is found on the hidden side of a fabric, intended for strengthening, not for show. I took it back to the sea.

I am collecting seaweed again. Obviously it is not weed to the ocean. Pieces like strips of leather, malleable and substantial, they are rich with nutrients. I experiment with weaving and adding more text.

Moving between painting, printing text and weaving. The colours from vegetables applied in thin layers and left to dry whilst I do other things.

I do not know if the colours from vegetables will last, but I am finding my own way with colour, mark-making and experimenting with texture. Inadvertently the movement of the sea may have snuck in. It feels good to be painting again – how many years have I carried the message in the my head that it is not what I do as an artist…. and how difficult it is to explain what I do do!

The digital realm as a vessel may have served its purpose and is looming in my mind now as a pressure, shifting my focus from process to outcome. Today I wanted to use it to write about this, tomorrow I may let go and just do.

What might it mean to enact a collective work with the sea? 

A rinse that softens water and rocks

Non toxic colours that grow from the soil

Tumeric root, beetroot, red cabbage, onion skins

Pebbles and seascape painted with vegetable stains

Woven and tied with kelp

Taken to the water

Placed and washed

The sea subtracts the red

Replacing it with crimson kelp

In the space where seaweed was painted

The iPhone contribution to the work is to video the washing of the seascape and to generate stills that wash away the colour way beyond the action of the sea!

What emerges one day feeds into the next. A series of starting points that form parallel threads crossing or merging unexpectedly. The pebble from yesterday is still in my head, rather than my body. I am minding the gap between us and venture off to spend more time with pebbles.

Switching tack, but working with the same words, ‘Mind the Gap’ is a phrase that occurs during a sound clip given to me by MUD Collective colleague Farah Mulla as a (surprising) prompt to use during the residency. Another collective member who is both a geologist and artist posted videos of rocks and  sea, sensing, but not knowing the significance. Her name is Dr Nawrast Sabah Abdalwaha and she is in Basra, Iraq. Farah is a sound artist based in India. Today I filmed the waves breaking over rocks and have been combining this with the audio from Farah and video clips from Nawrast.

There is still work to be done on the video and I share a few screen shots of the work in progress. The audio which flows in a strange tension with the visuals is absent of course and I feel an urge to explain, but hesitate to say anything – other than ‘Mind the Gap’.

Video to follow at some point….

A pebble taps at my head

The word brain wants to say ‘welcome, come on in’

2 problems

1. There is no common word language
2. The invitation is irrelevant

Rethink

Can we communicate via our common elements?

What we are made from

and

What has shaped us?

Painting pebbles with water

Fluid medium in contradiction to the solid, heavy stone

Tricks to break the flow have limited success

but conjure soft innards, shiny wet tubes

Comparison of the artistry of pebble and painting

An appreciation of the forces of deep time

Heat, earth movements and the powerful action of water